Playing All the Angles (22 page)

“Every family has one,” Dominic agreed. “Now come on. Let’s go make ourselves a scandal and a hissing.”

They were nearly there when Alora’s voice came from behind them. “Isabelle? Where are you going? We’re just about to do the cake.”

Isabelle slowed and looked behind her, pulling Dominic up short, making him groan with exasperation. “We’ll be right there,” she called back.

Dominic turned to Isabelle, looking agitated.

“The cake is a big deal.”

He pulled her up close. “So is this,” he growled, letting her feel his hardness against her thighs. “Can’t they wait?”

“Cake, Dominic.” She pulled away. “It’s not going to hurt you to wait.”

The hungry look that flashed in his eyes made her smile. She had some power there still, and in that second, she realized how her self-confidence had been dashed in the previous weeks. She hadn’t even noticed it happening, but it had.

“Cake,” she said firmly and headed toward the table.

He followed her, and soon, they were cutting into the massive confection, taking small slices and feeding them to each other. Then the cake was served to the guests, and a few more toasts were made before the party wound down a bit and became less formal. As was usual with these things, the families seemed to break into their own groups, and Dominic was drawn into a conversation with his father and brothers that further distracted him from his dragging Isabelle into the loo for a quick shag.

Blessed relief
, she thought, scanning the crowd for her own conversation to join. She spotted Patrick, who waved her over.

“Great party, Issie,” he said, leaning to kiss her cheek as he took her hands in greeting.

“I’m so glad you came. I really am. I know I didn’t say it earlier.”

“Well, Mum wouldn’t have missed it, and I can’t be a spoilsport, can I?”

She bit her lips together and squeezed his hands. “It won’t always be awkward, will it? At some point we’ll just be Isabelle and Patrick, the friends, not Isabelle and Patrick, the ex-couple, won’t we?”

“We’re already the friends. I think we should just rewrite history altogether. When people say something to us about having dated, we’ll say, ‘What? That never happened.’”

“Go on!” Isabelle bumped his shoulder with hers. “How well do you think that would work?”

“Works for politicians and historians everywhere!”

“You’re too much. But just the right kind of too much. Shall we sit?”

“Let’s. I could get you a drink?”

“Please.”

Isabelle took a seat and watched him walk away. It wasn’t so long ago that she and her family would have been planning this party for the two of them. It couldn’t have been easy for him to show up. Still, if they were to be friends, it wouldn’t do to keep thinking on the past. They had to find new inroads to the future.

When he returned with two glasses of champagne, she toasted him. “To the doctor,” she said, raising her glass.

“And the teacher.”

“And friendship.”

“Above all else.”

“So, my friend, I want to know more about what happened between the monastery and the university.”

Patrick seemed to consider, then fixed on a starting point and began to fill her in. He’d gotten up to his decision to leave the rosary for a stethoscope when Isabelle realized Dominic was watching her from across the room. He didn’t look very happy, or particularly sober.

He strode over and laid a firm hand on Isabelle’s shoulder, shooting Patrick a dark expression. “Hello, Father Pat. Wanna hear my confession?”

“Dominic,” Isabelle started, but Patrick just shrugged.

“What’ve you got?”

“I’m gonna take the little wife here, and I’m gonna shag her rotten in the back room. How many Hail Marys for that one?” Winking, he tugged at Isabelle. “Quick! While he’s running it through the Catholic calculator, let’s make a dash for it!”

“Dominic!” she said, letting him pull her up but not drag her very far. “What are you doing?”

“I just told you the plan,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.

She shook her head. “I think we should just go home.” She turned back to Patrick. “I’m sorry about this. Thanks so much for coming.”

“What are you apologizing to him for?” Dominic asked indignantly.

“You were rude.”

“I was?” His eyebrows shot up. “Because I interrupted him chatting you up?”

“He was not chatting me up. We were talking,” she insisted. “That’s all.”

“Didn’t look that way to me, with your hair twirling and his shoulder nudging.”

She sighed. “I’m going to tell Mum and Dad that we’re leaving.”

“I’ll walk with you,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you getting lost.”

She looked back to Patrick apologetically as Dominic led her away, and he gave her a slight nod before she disappeared between two groups of people gathered nearby. They found her parents, who were sitting with Alora, Doyle, and the kids, who were in various states of sleepiness.

“Mum, Dad, thanks so much for the wonderful reception. We’re going to go,” she said, forcing a happy expression on her face.

“Yes, we’re going to continue our celebrations at home.” Dominic nodded. “Thanks for the do. It was brilliant.”

Outside, once they were back in the hired car, Dominic’s eyes narrowed. “So, I was rude, huh? Rude for coming over to collect you and interrupting your conversation?”

“Rude for the way you did it! Like a jealous lover!”

“I am a jealous lover.” His tone was measured. “And I didn’t like the way you looked together.”

“It’s completely innocent! I’ve done nothing wrong!”

“I didn’t say you had.” He crossed his arms at her defensiveness. “I don’t want him around.”

“What?”

“I don’t want him around, and I don’t want you going round him. It’s pretty obvious he’s just waiting for his chance.”

“He is not. He knows I’m happily married. He would never behave inappropriately,” she insisted. “He was practically a priest.”

“But he isn’t,” Dominic countered. “And I saw the way he was looking at you, so don’t tell me that he wouldn’t give it a go.”

She gaped at him. “Don’t you trust me?”

“I don’t trust him.”

“And you don’t trust me with him?”

“I don’t trust him!” Dominic raised his voice. “And I don’t want you around him.”

“What if I said the same thing to you about Eve?”

“I don’t fucking see Eve, now, do I? And anyway, I’ve told you a thousand times that she was just a shag. You were in love with that guy, and he left you high and dry.”

“And you don’t trust me.”

“I don’t trust him, Isabelle. Period.”

She huffed. “You know, it’s really rich coming from you.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“You’re the one that flirts with all the groupies and who knows what else.”

He gave a dark laugh. “Then who better to tell you which men are trustworthy?”

“You’re not even going to deny it?”

“Sounds to me like you’ve made up your mind, baby. If I deny it, will you believe me? I’m not getting into that dead-end argument.”

“I wasn’t accusing you. I was pointing out that you’re out there more than I am, and I still trust you,” she said darkly. “Or I did.”

“Well, that’s rich,” he mimicked. “Coming from you, and don’t tell me you haven’t been sniffing around your priest behind my back, because that was no first-time-in-a-long-time conversation you were having, was it?”

“I met him at the hospital when I took Olive in,” she said pointedly. “And he and I’ve met up for lunch, all of which I told you about. Of course, you probably weren’t listening to me since you went temporarily deaf after we came back from Paris.”

“Whatever that means.” Dominic shrugged at her.

“Well—” She took a breath, then spat, “You’ve had Eve’s number in your contact list all this time. How do I know you haven’t been seeing her behind my back?”

His mouth was flat and mean when he answered, and she felt herself shiver, remembering the dark side Eve had mentioned. “Baby, if I’d been seeing Eve behind your back, you’d have been able to tell by the claw marks on mine.”

Isabelle felt her face color, and she had trouble catching her breath, though she was determined not to cry. She turned away from him and didn’t say another word for the rest of the drive home. Once there, she got out first and hurried into the house, up the stairs to the bedroom. Before he had reached the landing halfway up, she had thrown his pillow, a sheet, and one of the blankets out of the room, letting the door slam behind her. She hesitated, then locked it.

Let him stew it out on the sofa
, she thought. He’d ruined her night. She wasn’t going to let him ruin her sleep.

Chapter 14

E
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, watching television. They had talked again about whether or not she should tell her sister about the baby, and now Eve was coming down harder on the side of doing so. She wanted to wait until after their party, though, because it might be the last time she saw her family for a very, very long time, if ever again. There was a real possibility that she was going to lose them entirely when the truth came out. “And I’ve always somehow been responsible for whether or not the family stuck together. Even way back then.” Eve shuddered.

“I don’t get it.” Tad shook his head, hitting pause on the DVD player. “I don’t. If your mother knew…why’d she send you away instead of dealing with it?”

Eve sighed. Only Tad knew the whole truth behind the events that had landed her at that militaristic boarding school. Marcus knew a lot of it, but for a thousand reasons, she’d never been able to tell anyone the horrible details. Before Tad, she had only trusted her mother with the story, and that had not turned out well for her.

“My parents were having problems then. They didn’t have a smooth marriage, you know? Too young, too many babies, too much time apart, too many people in the house, what with Uncle Bobby staying with us while he tried to work things out with Aunt Marie. Mum had been drinking a lot, and Dad couldn’t abide that. There were arguments about the drinking, the lazy brother taking up the sofa, the drinking. Did I mention the drinking?

“She’d been drunk that first night and said she didn’t care what happened to me. Later, when she was sober…I guess she was terrified Dad would leave if he found out. So, she convinced me that I was being a good daughter not to tell—I was helping her and Dad. And I was helping Alora and Isabelle. I was being a good sister, making sure our family was okay, and they were protected. She promised me it would stop, but it didn’t. So, eventually, I just came around to the idea that it was how my life had to be. We all had our parts, and that was mine.

“She couldn’t stand herself, though, and our relationship changed. Like, when she looked at me, she remembered. Then, she started blaming me for everything that went wrong. If a pound turned up missing, I must have taken it. If a tea cup was chipped, I was the one who had broken it. When I turned up pregnant, she confronted me about it in front of all of them, saying I’d gotten myself done up by a boy at school. It was crazy. I remember thinking I’d gone crazy—I mean, there was just no reason to it. She screamed over me when I tried to protest, and Dad couldn’t even look at me. She had to choose a relationship, and she chose the marriage. That was the end of us.”

“Is it because he didn’t believe he was really your father?”

“I think that’s part of it. Yes. They never had a day’s trouble with Alora or Isabelle, and it’s clear they are his.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t think it matters. Mother won’t ever say I’m not his, and he made the choice to raise me as his, so that’s that.”

“So, he doesn’t know? Or your sisters?”

“No! Absolutely not. I was so ashamed—I couldn’t have said anything when it happened. After everything, after I miscarried and all the dust from that settled, there was no point to saying anything. Then, I was just angry. Anyway, Alora developed her own version of the story, and that’s the one she pulls out to do real damage when she can’t think of any other defense. Mother’s never bothered to correct her or put an end to that. It still ended up hurting us all and doing harm to the family. It just did it in different ways.” She sighed.

“So, you’re the bad seed.”

“Yes.”

“And still protecting your father and sisters from the truth.”

Eve gave a soft snort. “I’ve thought about telling Dad the truth, but I don’t think he’d believe me after all this time.”

“Why not?”

“Easier not to believe me. And God, I’ve given them enough reason to hate me since then. I was just so angry. I’ve been terrible to all of them. I know all the buttons, and I’ve stood there jamming my thumbs into every single one like a brat in an elevator. I’ve done especially wrong by Alora.”